


Freely Given

by Glitteringworlds



Category: Gatchaman Crowds
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:42:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1190640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitteringworlds/pseuds/Glitteringworlds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are always problems to face after the end of something, and for Utsutsu, it's figuring out how to balance what she has given with what she is asked to take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freely Given

1\. 

It had been like the tide, a give and take that she had grown used to with time. And if it tended to ebb more than it flowed back to her, Utsutsu had always figured that they were hours she wouldn’t miss.

Flowers give her seconds, and that had never mattered before, but now she stuffs freshly wilted bouquets into the trashcan so that no one will find them. There are so many around these days, so many that were presented to them after things finally quieted down. Things have mostly returned to their usual patterns, but the flowers keep coming, and she figures that no one will notice if a few disappear here and there. They are just seconds, but she counts them up to minutes, and hopefully they will be enough.

She worries about running out of time to find the right words. There are thoughts that still float at the edges of her, a happiness that shines through with no way to express it. Hajime smiles at her, holds her, and she wants to say something, wants to pay in minutes and hours and days to find a way to put it into ugly syllables.

It’s not that she regrets it, any of it. Life given to strangers means life that they have to spend with the people they love, means love spreading out from the palm of her hand, which is more than she had ever thought she could give. And seeing Joe leaning lazily against the side of a building, flustered Sugane stuttering next to him, makes her smile. Seeing O.D, lanky legs draped luxuriously over the side of couch, hand casually resting on Altair’s head, she is happy.

And sometimes, hours later, Utsutsu will run back to find the trashed bouquets, pouring life back into them in a frantic scramble, knitting together broken stems and smoothing the sad hapless petals. She’s never sure whether she feels relieved or guilty for the rebalancing, but Hajime loves flowers. She keeps going out to buy new vases for all of them. Nothing plain and glass and fluted, but rather, the strange twisted colorful things that come from middle school potter sales, or from second-hand stores. They have more personality to them, Hajime explains one day, while arranging a dozen bright daisies. Flowers don’t belong in anything that doesn’t look alive itself.

Utsutsu keeps daisies alive, always. They remind her or Hajime too much. Everything reminds her of Hajime too much. She is like life itself, every bit of her, and that’s the problem. Hajime smiles and there is life in the corners of her mouth and the slivers of her eyes. Hajime sings and there is life in the drop of her notes, or the string of her rhymes, or the quiet of forgotten words. Hajime dances and there is life in the twirl of her skirt. She moves and it is in every muscle of her body, every vibrant bit of her. She doesn’t take it from the things around her, she reflects it back onto them. And even though she never sees a drop of it missing from Hajime’s face, Utsutsu wants to keep the world as bright as she can, to see it reflected even brighter. Utsutsu wants to give her flowers, but she also wants to give her words, and wants to give her seconds. A thousand thousand thousand, enough to string a life up upon, seconds like twinkle lights to brighten the path for as long as Utsutsu can make them last.

2.

Hajime holds her hands everyday now. Usually not for long, but she makes a point of it. It’s always easy, small things, and it’s always without attention to which hand she is grabbing. Sometimes Utsutsu wonders if Hajime has forgotten which hand is which, but she knows that’s not the case. The point of it, of course, is that Hajime remembers. She would never forget something so important, but she also refuses to let it be more important than the feeling of threading her fingers through Utsutsu’s, pressing palm to tiny palm.

So it isn’t surprising, the day that Hajime takes both of Utsutsu’s hands in her own. Hajime holds them clasped in between them, both of them, bent up from the elbows like a half-hearted surrender. The physical contact between them is easy, natural. The closeness is comforting, but it still sends Utsutsu spiraling, if in a way more pleasant than the downward spiral of inattention that had composed her days before Hajime. It is quite opposite of that, suddenly she is aware of every piece of herself, every whirring click of her mind, every one of the words that crunch up inside those gears, grinding them to a shuddering halt. She feels every second.

But it isn’t unusual. It isn’t new or strange or unexpected. Until it is. Until Hajime asks for Utsutsu to balance them out. That’s how she puts it.

“Utsutsu!” she says, leaning in close, so they are almost nose to nose. “I need you to do me a favor!”

Utsutsu tilts her head, usually half-lidded eyes open wide. “What is it?”

“I want you toooo…” she draws out the sound, making a half-pouting thoughtful face. “To balance us!”

Utsutsu doesn’t understand at first. The meaning comes to her it starts and bursts. “Balance our lives?” She’s frowning now, with a tiny downturned mouth, and drawing her head back away from Hajime’s sudden bright smile.

“That’s it! I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I know you said that when you use your power, it takes from your own life. You’ve done so much for everyone, helped Joe and O.D and Rui and we are all so grateful.”

“Yes, but-” Utsutsu tries to cut in, but Hajime isn’t done.

“I realized, see, that it can’t have been easy. Everyone knows it, but I don’t think they know what to say about it. And I thought, if you give parts of your life up for all of us, then it means that we will get less time with you.” Hajime leans in closer, conspiratorially. “And I will get less time with you. But if you even us out…”

“But Hajime,” Utsutsu says, finding her mental footing, “I can’t. I could never take that from you. Your life is…” the words aren’t there, are never quite there, but she presses on anyway. “I like helping everyone. I don’t want to take things from anyone. I don’t want to get lost again, I don’t want to be scared to touch. But if I give, if I only give, then I won’t have to worry about it.”

Hajime pulls back, giving her room. She listens with her entire body, leaning in without pushing into Utsutsu’s space. Not smiling anymore, but not because of any new sadness, but rather, because a new respectful neutrality has settled over her. Only the crease of her eyebrows gives away her concern.

Utsutsu continues, not making eye contact. “You give so much to everyone too, Hajime. And you are always happier for the giving. It doesn’t take anything from you. But what I can do, all I can do, it means taking part of my life and giving it out. It’s not worth as much,” she finally says, words tripping out faster and faster. She’s not used to talking this much. “It’s not worth as much as yours. My life is small and I can use it to help people who are so much bigger than me. Like you. Like you. Like-”

“Utsutsu!” Hajime’s interjection is sharp and sudden, loud against the soft whisper that Utsutsu’s words have unraveled into. “You have it all wrong!” She seems indignant, eyebrows now aggressively grinding together, lips pushed out in a frustrated pout. “No one’s life is more than anyone elses! What is worth more is the time you spend with the people you love.” 

Utsutsu blushes a bit and this, and she can’t help but pull in a little closer to Hajime.

“The way I see it,” she continues, pulling their hands in close together between them, “Everybody shines brighter when they are with people they love. It’s like when you have so many fireworks that you light up the night sky as bright as day, because all sparks are part of the bigger light, and the bigger light is brighter than anything you’ve ever seen! And to me, Utsutsu, you are part of what makes life as bright as that. So I don’t want to see you burn out before me, alright?”

Utsutsu isn’t sure what to say, so they just sit there, hands clasped together, Hajime’s eyes on her, her eyes on their hands. Despite the request that hangs between them, it is comfortable. Everything is more comfortable, Utsutsu thinks, with Hajime.

3.

O.D finds her curled up with Altair, hands cupped around a red origami frog. Utsutsu stirs as they sit down, hand finding the top of her head as easily it usually finds Al’s. O.D strokes her hair in long, steady movements, settling slowly into the couch next to her, as if she might spook. They pull Utsutsu up against their chest, so she is half leaning, half lying, legs pulled up tight in an unhappy bunch.

“Dear sweet Utsutsu,” they whisper, rough voice as comforting as it always is, loud even in the softer tones. “Whatever is the matter?”

They sit in silence for a long while before Utsutsu can figure out how to respond, but there is no pressure. O.D is used to waiting a long time for her words to come.

“Hajime asked me to take some of her life into myself. To… to balance us.”

“Ahhhhh,” O.D says, a chuckle creeping out amidst their sympathy. “So our little sunshine is shining too brightly again?”

“I can’t do it O.D,” she replies quickly, burying her face into the crook of their arm. “After everything she has given to us, how can she ask me to take that?”

“Utsutsu.” They let her muffle small sobs into their shoulders, but in time, they pull her back, gently, looking into her face. Utsutsu’s eyes are red, and they can see that it is a redness deeper than recent tears. It’s the kind of sore heaviness that comes from a night of them. “Utsutsu, why do you think you would be taking from her? It is something she is offering up, a gift just as much as the rest of them.”

Utsutsu snuffles. “Because I would be taking it from her.” She cannot resolve the feeling any more clearly than that, so she just repeats it. “Because I would be taking it.”

O.D leans back against the couch, letting out a long, thoughtful hum. Their hand moves back and forth across the small of her back, smoothing out the worried wrinkles. “People spend their lives in many ways. Sometimes they waste them with hurting, and sometimes they use them to create art, and sometimes they simply enjoy precious solitude. But sometimes they give them to other people. In marriage and in partnership and in friendship and in love. People do it every day.”

“But this is…”

“Different, I know. Things will always be different for you.” They can feel Utsutsu nod agreement into their shoulder. “But different doesn’t mean worse, or more cruel. And it doesn’t have to mean lonely.”

They smile down at her. “And here is another thing.” They pick up her hand, her right hand, in their own, and hold it over their heart. “The other thing is that we don’t have to make choices about our lives all by ourselves. Hajime wants to share her life with you, because you are a part of her life that she doesn’t want to lose. But I don’t want to lose you either Utsutsu. I don’t want to lose the thought of the two of you together.”

Utsutsu almost pulls her hand back. Almost, but not quite. “In fact,” they continue, “in fact, none of us do.” They are smiling now, a smile that crept into their words and then their face. “In fact I don’t imagine any of us do. We are family now, aren’t we? And families share their lives with one another.”

“I don’t want to take from any of you though.”

“Don’t think of it as taking. It’s never been taking, Utsutsu. You’ve been thinking about it the wrong way. It’s not taking. It’s spreading. It’s reflecting love from one person to many.”

She smiles at that, letting the thought settle. She’s not sure if she believes O.D, but the idea of it feels nice to entertain.

“You don’t have to decide right now. But know that I will, and I think we all will, share between us the life that we have to spend.”

4.

Somehow, the only one who protests is Sugane. It’s not strategic, he tells them. If all of them die at the same time who is supposed to take over the job?

Paipai loudly insists that, as leader, he deems it perfectly strategically sound, and that should be enough for all of them.

And Hajime holds Utsutsu’s hand through it all, squeezing it in uneasy silences, shoulder pressed into hers.


End file.
